State officials said Tuesday they are on track to have Oklahoma’s new public health lab in Stillwater fully operational by October.
Newborn screening and COVID-19 sequencing are now being done there. Newborn screening tests had been outsourced to a Pennsylvania lab, while COVID sequencing remained in Oklahoma City.
A dedicated team is working on the lab build out. Health department officials expect the lab will be capable of handling sexually transmitted disease, tuberculosis, rabies, mycology and microbiology testing by the fall.
Deputy Health Commissioner Travis Kirkpatrick said the public health lab’s accreditation should not be an issue, despite delays in getting everything up and running.
"As we make the transition, they’ve taken the approach that we would schedule a — I guess a site visit once we start to see the tail end of that accreditation cycle lapse, and we have been in contact with accrediting bodies as we make the transition," Kirkpatrick said.
Lab staffing is still down because of attrition and more than a dozen workers who did not want to relocate from Oklahoma City, but Kirkpatrick thinks it won’t hinder the lab’s work.
"We’ve built into this new model the force multiplier of technology as a way for us to rely less on the human capital management component of how you run a daily public health lab," Kirkpatrick said.
State officials have been heavily criticized over various aspects of the new public health lab, from hiring an outside company to manage it to moving it in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lab Director Dr. Michael Kayser resigned in mid-April, and the state health department is conducting a national search for his replacement.
